6

 

 

THE EMPIRE CALLED the thing operating in the Room of Lost Souls stealth tech, but Elissa learned it was something more than that.

She finally understood on her first full day on the Discovery, as she went on a tour of the research labs with the head scientist, Keon Vilhauser. Vilhauser called himself a technician rather than a researcher; he said he liked knowing how something worked, not how to recreate it in the lab.

The labs filled the entire center of the Discovery. The ship was built with the scientific function in mind. Each section was walled off from the other sections in case something went wrong.

In fact, the Discovery could separate into three parts if necessary—the bridge and the front part of the ship could detach from the middle, and the engineering section, all the way in the back, could do the same. If an on-board experiment got out of control and the ship had warning, it could abandon the scientific middle and leave it alone in the darkness of space.

Elissa didn’t like the design. She preferred the older science ships that had the experimental labs in the back. The labs could be detached and left behind with the bulk of the ship intact.

The problem was that those ships were also easier to attack, and there was no better way to destroy a science vessel then to hit its lab with something lethal.

The Discovery was the command ship of this expedition. Elissa commanded a squadron of thirty vessels, most of which would simply stand guard outside the Room’s section of space. They would link their sensors, covering an established region of space. Such a technique was called an information shield, and it was highly effective. It made sure no other ships would enter the region while the Discovery was working at the Room of Lost Souls.

In fact, Elissa had added one additional protection outside the sector: she placed warning buoys along the way to the squadron, warning any outsiders that proceeding into the sector would be considered trespassing, and would be punished as such.

She believed in warning innocents that they might be getting in trouble. That way if they showed up near her squadron, and their ship had to be destroyed, they at least had sufficient warning.

After the Discovery had left port, Vilhauser invited Elissa into the science lab. He took her to his lab first.

Vilhauser had covered the tables with small vials of yellow pulsing light. She could see them from the doorway. The lab felt…unusual…as if it had more static than other places on the ship.

Vilhauser invited her to step inside, but stopped her near the door for a good minute before he spoke. He had watched her for that entire minute, as if he expected her to run.

Elissa had been stared down by stronger people than Vilhauser. As he stared at her, she stared at him. He had long black hair, curly like Rustin’s, but unlike Rustin’s, the curls were out of control. Vilhauser’s eyes matched his hair color, and probably made him attractive when he was younger. Now, frown lines turned his eyes downward, and marked two deep grooves that ran from either side of his nose down to his chin. He was thin and flabby, the kind of person who wouldn’t have made it through five minutes of her standard qualification drill for incoming crew members.

“Well,” he said flatly. “At least you have the marker.”

She knew about the genetic marker. She wouldn’t have been on this trip if she didn’t have it. Neither would her crew.

So she found his comment odd, almost as odd as she found him.

“They made sure we all have it,” she said. “No one would be on this mission if they lacked the marker.”

His frown lines seemed to grow deeper. Then he shook his head as if she were the most naïve person he had ever met.

“You have a lot of faith in your military masters,” he said.

She bristled, but she didn’t show it. She hated it when civilians who benefitted from a military presence bad-mouthed the military. Only her training kept her from expressing her disgust at him.

“I’ve been on half a dozen of these so-called SRPs,” he said, “and even though the crew is supposed to be vetted for the marker, the vetting is poor. If one of your crew members flew near the Room of Lost Souls, then someone considers them vetted.”

She hadn’t checked the vetting, and that idea gave her pause. But she didn’t move. And she didn’t let Vilhauser know that his point made her uneasy.

Either he sensed it, or he felt the need to justify his statement. He added, “I’ve had soldiers die because we’ve been running stealth tech experiments on a science ship. Usually nothing happens outside the lab, but every now and again, the wrong person walks inside, and dies. Horribly.”

His expression didn’t change either, as if “horribly” wasn’t all that horrible, or as if he had become very jaded about the whole thing.

“Your name is Trekov,” he said, “and one of your relatives died in the Room, which means that some branches of your family lack the marker. However, you wouldn’t be standing in here if you didn’t have the marker.”

She nodded toward the vials of pulsing light. “I take it that’s an active stealth tech field.”

“I wouldn’t call it a field,” he said. “But it is active, and someone without the marker would be in trouble right now.”

That anger she’d kept tamped down since she’d been on vacation rose again. The arrogant bastard. He’d brought her in here to see if she would die? What an asshole.

What a dangerous asshole.

She made note of that.

“Do you want to bring the entire crew in here one at a time?” she asked in a neutral tone, as if she hadn’t figured out that she would have died without the marker. Inside, though, she wanted to give full voice to the anger she felt. It was all she could do to keep her words from being sarcastic.

“Of course not,” he said. “We should have done something like that before we came out here. I looked over the records and made certain that a preponderance of the crew had gone into a prescribed stealth tech area at least once. The crew members who hadn’t are either on the lower decks or I asked them to be moved to other ships in the squadron.”

She straightened her shoulders and raised her chin ever so slightly. So that was where the confusing orders had come from. Lieutenant Calthorpe had informed her that certain crew members were not allowed on the Discovery for personnel reasons and that others would be confined to areas outside of the laboratory middle.

Some of those crew members did not like the constraint and asked her personally why she had ordered that. She hadn’t, she told them, and then approved their transfers to other ships in the squadron if they so desired.

Now, she wondered if she should have left any of them on this ship at all.

“I know no one has briefed you on exactly what we’ll be doing,” Vilhauser said. “Succinctly, our mission is this: we believe that the Room has an active stealth tech device, but we can’t find it. Our mission is to locate it and remove it from the Room. We will be taking items from the Room and testing them—away from the Room itself. You should know that if anything happens to the Discovery, we prefer it happen away from the Room so that the Room remains intact.”

That last part Flag Commander Janik had told her. The Room of Lost Souls was a valuable treasure and should not be destroyed under any circumstances. At the time, she had thought the circumstances he referred to were an attack by another ship. Now, she realized that he meant should something go wrong, it was better to blow up the Discovery (or parts of it) than to harm the Room itself.

“You do understand that this mission could last months,” Vilhauser said.

“Of course,” she said, this time letting just a hint of that sarcasm out. “I was briefed.”

She made it sound like everything he had told her was old hat, which it most decidedly was not. But she didn’t want him to know that her superiors had treated her as poorly as he had assumed they had.

“Good,” Vilhauser said. “I trust you have enough here to keep the crew entertained.”

Entertained. A military unit did not need entertainment. It did need action, though, and she had already discussed that with her superiors before the mission. She would be running some simulations, just to keep her people “entertained,” as Vilhauser put it. She preferred to think of it as maintaining the crew’s readiness.

“We are prepared to serve as long as we have to,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “Then you’re dismissed.”

She didn’t move. He had finally gone too far.

“Mister Vilhauser,” she said.

“Doctor,” he corrected.

She nodded an acknowledgement but didn’t repeat the honorific.

“I run this mission,” she said. “When you are on the Discovery, you are under my command. Is that clear?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I run the mission. You run the ship.”

“I run the squadron,” she said. “You determine how long the scientific part of the mission will last. You handle the science and the scientists. I make sure you are all safe. If I believe there’s a threat, you will listen to me, and you will leave.”

“That’s not my understanding, ma’am.”

“Then clarify your understanding with your superiors, Vilhauser,” she said, deciding to forgo the honorific entirely. “Because I have my orders and I plan to follow them. Are we clear?”

He remained silent for several minutes. When she didn’t try to fill that silence, he said, “Are we going to have a problem, ma’am?”

She gave him what Rustin called her nasty smile. “I don’t know, Vilhauser. But you should know this: If we have a problem, I will settle it in the way that is best for the crew.”

“And if you harm this mission, Commander,” he said, “I will report you to your superiors.”

“Of course you will,” she said. “You’ll be within your rights.”

“You sound like you don’t care about my rights, Commander.”

This time, she let her emotions into her voice. “You got it, Doctor. I don’t care about your rights. I care about the lives of the crews on my ships, and you just made it very clear that you don’t. If you truly worried about those with the marker, you would have done more than review files. You would have spoken to me before we launched, and you certainly wouldn’t have risked my life.”

“You’re paid to risk your life, ma’am,” he said.

“I am paid to protect and serve the Empire, Doctor,” she said. “I am not paid to be at the whim of a scientist who has no concept of right or wrong. Now are we clear?”

He studied her for a long moment. “You don’t seem to like me, ma’am.”

“I’m not supposed to like you,” she said. “I’m just supposed to ensure that you complete your scientific mission without interference from others. I will do that. And you will do your best not to accidentally kill my people.”

He let out a snort. “They said you were tough. I had no idea how tough.”

“No,” she said. “You have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of. Keep that in mind as you proceed, Vilhauser. My people come first.”

“If that were true, you’d be commanding all of this mission.”

“That’s what you don’t understand, Vilhauser,” she said as she let herself out of the lab. “I am commanding all of this mission. And you will listen to me, whether you want to or not.”